If you see a pile of vinyl
records on a table in the middle of the street you don’t just walk on do you?
Of course you don’t, we’re talking about a free LP or two here, what could
possibly put me off having a look?
Oh!
I did of course have a look
through and regretted not bringing my special carrier bag for records with me.
The pickings were slim it has to be said, the usual charity shop shite that
makes you wonder who bought it in the first place, but I don’t like to think of
vinyl going into landfill so I gave some of them a good home; Carousel original film soundtrack, Now That’s
What I Call Music 7 (I collect the vinyl editions of this series), The Best Of The Glenn Miller Orchestra Volume One, a Lonnie Donegan album simply titled Lonnie Donegan (Pickwick label, who made a lot of
compilation albums of this ilk), Class of ’55 (K-Tel
label, another purveyor of bargain price compilation albums), and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons performed by The Vivaldi Chamber
Orchestra. I also managed to buy the 1979 Whoopee! Annual, it was only two
pounds but it had been price-corner-clipped which probably explains the low
price. It was in a charity shop that used the words ‘vintage’ and ‘retro’ in
the same poster, which basically means they can sell the same shit but charge
more for it.
Free records is a good way to
start a Saturday in town, but even better is when my regular Saturday writings
about breakfasts leads to the invitation to turn up and dine for free on the
glorious full English breakfast. It hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it will.
Either that or an offer of paid gig writing about dining out on café breakfasts
will come from a newspaper or magazine. That might not happen either, but if
you download the blog to your Kindle for 99p a month (link below), or make use
of the ‘donate’ button above this blog, then we can turn this blog into a paid
writing gig. (By the way, a big thanks you to everyone who has done that very
same thing in the last few weeks).
Photo: GB Cafe's Facebook page
This week we breakfasted at GB
Café in Sneinton Market, where I have had sandwiches before but never a sit
down meal. There was a board outside advertising the full English for three
pounds ninety five, but a look at the menu persuaded me to pay an extra pound
for the special breakfast.
The special breakfast
consisted of egg, two rashers of bacon, one sausage, two hash browns, two black
puddings, tomato (spelled ‘tomatoe’ on the menu, but this is not a spelling café),
and beans, (I hate having to choose between the two, they deserve to be
together on the plate), and one slice of bread and butter; not really enough to
do a full plate wipe.
As we walked in to the place,
a waitress directed us to a table and handed us a menu. It took a good five
minutes of being ignored before we cottoned on to the fact that it was counter
service, which kind of made me wonder why we were given the impression that it
was waiter service. There was a confusing moment when I was paying, (another
thing – I object to paying in advance for food, it is easier to refuse to pay
for a crap meal than it is to ask for a refund), when it turned out that we had
wandered in to some kind of offer. The manager had to intervene, but this is
what you get when you employ school children to work on a Saturday without
training them properly. The breakfast itself was very satisfying, filling but
didn’t leave me feeling stuffed. My only quibble, and it was quite a bit one,
was that they left the teabag in the mug. Even worse was the fact that I didn’t
realise until it was almost in my mouth.
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